honor guard or a party of jailers with equal reason.
This uncertainty, he decided, accurately reflected the guards' attitude; he had committed no crime, and claimed to be a person of some significance, but they had seen no proof of his good intentions. They were not eager either to trust him or to offend him beyond what prudence demanded.
He was not particularly troubled by this. The thought did slip into his mind that, had he carried the Sword of Bheleu on this trip, he would have taken umbrage at such treatment and massacred the lot of them.
His first sight of the city of Ur-Dormulk distracted him from questions of protocol or concern over proper behavior. He had expected the inner gate to open onto a street of packed earth or mud, lined with houses of stone, wood, and plaster, such as he had seen in other human habitations; or, if not onto a street, then perhaps into a market square. Skelleth had been built of fieldstone and half-timbered plaster; the buildings of Mormoreth had been faced with white marble; Dыsarra was a jumble of gleaming black stone and more humble structures.
Ur-Dormulk was built of granite, and rather than on a street, he found himself at the top of a long staircase, easily half a hundred steps, whence he looked out at an array of towers and turrets. Crags of bare rock thrust up in the distance, reminding him that he was in the foothills of the western mountains.
He had noticed from without that the ramparts stood atop a ridge, and that the gate was set into the top of that ridge, so he had expected to find the city inside sloping downward from the heights; he had not expected to find the drop so sharp that steps were necessary, or so long that only the higher towers reached above eye level.
He had known that there were stone towers, and had even glimpsed them from a distance; he had known that they were old and weathered and strange, but now he could see that they were more bizarre than he had realized. The towers were not merely pitted and dull, but worn down to near shapelessness; not a single sharp corner remained anywhere in sight. Flat-topped or spired, each of the tall buildings seemed more like a rough mound than anything structured by man-save that they stood as much as a hundred feet above the city streets. Some were almost indistinguishable from the weathered humps of rock with which nature had ornamented the city.
Those outcroppings struck Garth as being slightly eerie, rising up in naked splendor throughout Ur- Dormulk, differing from the towers only because they were larger, windowless, and slightly more irregular. They seemed to form a rough line, beyond which he could see nothing of the city; he wondered if they formed part of its western perimeter and if they had been incorporated into the defenses as the ridge had been used in the east.
A cool, damp breeze brushed his face, and he blinked; then the soldiers were escorting him down the steps, and he was too concerned with his footing to look at the city further. The steps themselves were badly worn, polished by the passage of thousands, perhaps millions, of feet; the central portion had been smoothed down until it was almost a ramp, so that his guards directed him to one side, where the steps, though gleaming smooth and worn far below their original level, still had enough of an edge separating one from the next to make them more readily negotiable than the sheer slope.
When he was reasonably sure that he was not going to slip and tumble down the remaining length of the stair, he lifted his gaze from his own feet to the foot of the steps. They ended in a broad plaza, paved with the same gray stone that seemed to make up the entire city and as level as the plains of Skelleth. He was certain that that level surface was not natural, so close to the steep ridge.
He had at first been certain, also, that the gray stone was granite, a familiar substance in his homeland, but doubts began to creep in. Granite was a very hard stone, difficult to work, heavy and brittle-and it did not erode easily. He glanced at the steps again. There was an old granite wall in Ordunin, not far from his home, that had been erected when he was young, a century before; the edge that ran along its top was still sharp enough to cut an overman's finger. These steps, assuming that they had originally been level all the way across, had worn down a good eight inches in the center. If the stone were in truth granite, and had been eroded only by foot traffic, then its age must be incomprehensible.
The stone, he decided, must be something else, some substance that mocked granite in appearance, but which was far softer. Or perhaps water drained down the steps and had cut them away-though the fact that the wear was so broad argued against that, since water ordinarily cut a single channel, not a wide, uneven swath.
It didn't matter, he told himself.
He reached the bottom and looked around with interest. The plaza at the foot, though paved with this seeming granite, was worn down as well, with paths sunk inches deep into the stone showing where the merchants set up their booths on market day, where the traffic was heaviest, and what were the most popular routes across the square. The streets that led off in various directions were likewise paved and level, and likewise worn. Narrow parallel troughs indicated where carts had passed over the centuries, and broader depressions revealed where pedestrians walked. There were no gutters visible anywhere, save for these signs of wear, and no bare earth, and Garth realized why animal traffic was forbidden. Such streets would need careful cleaning; there was no natural drainage, since none of the streets sloped at all, and what drainage the paths provided would carry sewage directly to those areas that enjoyed the heaviest traffic and, therefore, the deepest wear. It struck him as odd that a city in the foothills should be so flat, save for the single ridge and the distant outcroppings. It was obviously contrived, and probably at great expense. He wondered why the builders had thought it worthwhile.
He wondered also, for perhaps a second, what pulled the wagons that had cut the parallel grooves he had noticed, but that question was answered by the sight of a young man pulling a small, two-wheeled cart, balanced on a single axle for ease in hauling.
The buildings that surrounded the plaza were all of the gray stone, ancient and worn. Most stood three or four stories in height, but were weathered into rounded, moundlike shapes, all corners erased by time. Any surface ornamentation that might once have existed had vanished long ago; only the size and location of doors and windows served to distinguish one from another.
He noticed that here and there gaps were visible, as if something had fallen away; here a door lintel was sunk back from the facade, there a few dark holes were arranged above a window. He realized that these must be where substances other than the gray rock had weathered away completely, and guessed that iron fittings had succumbed to rust-though if so, then it must have been a very long time ago, for all trace of rust had washed away.
The stone walls, he saw, were incredibly thick. They would have to be, to weather so badly and still stand strong.
The entire city gave the impression of something indescribably ancient, something that had stood so long that it had been accepted by the earth as part of itself, rather than being a mortal creation erected thereon.
The people of Ur-Dormulk gave no such impression; in contrast to their city, they wore gay silks and embroidered velvets in ornate and fantastical outfits. Garth saw no ordinary homespun anywhere; even the lowliest cart-hauler's garb was brightly dyed and embellished with colored threads. Red, green, blue, and purple- the streets were aswirl in color wherever the people of Ur-Dormulk went abroad.
There were no great crowds, but neither were the streets empty; strollers dawdled along, while others hurried about their business. Many glanced at the overman curiously, but none stopped to stare, and no one ventured too near the forbidding cluster of soldiery.
One figure, wearing a drooping hat and flowing tunic and cape all the color of dried blood, seemed to look at him for longer than most, and Garth was reminded very strongly of the magically protected Aghadite he had fought so futilely in Skelleth. He wondered whether the cult was active in Ur-Dormulk, whether it was an open, tolerated religion here or a secret society working underground.
He had not been molested by the sect since the incident in the market that had cost him his own sword, and his anger had therefore had a chance to cool slightly, but now it flared up again. He resolved that he would see that person who stared at him so insolently gutted by the Sword of Bheleu.
He turned his head to follow the red-garbed human out of sight and found himself looking at the profile of the soldier to his left. That reminded him where he was, and he fought down his ire. The human might not be an Aghadite, he told himself; the color might be coincidence, the gaze simple curiosity.
Or perhaps, his reasonable self had to admit, it was indeed an Aghadite agent, sent to watch him, or to taunt him with his or her presence-he was not certain of the creature's sex beneath the loose robe and
